1. If you believe in god, why would the existence of aliens prove that god doesn't exist?

Read Genesis. God created the heavens, the Earth, Man and assorted other critters and varmints. God creating aliens is never mentioned. And the Bible is infallible, so UFOs with an alien crew would put theologists in a bit of a bind. And in the part about Noah's Ark, it is never mentioned that Noah rounded up two aliens.

2. Why would you deny evidence in front of you?

Unfortunately, religion is not about evidence, it's about faith. Which is why religion has caused humanity so much suffering over the milleniums.

'when people begin to use religion to justify hatred and killing, and thus abandon the compassionate ethic of all great world religions, they have embarked on a course that represents a defeat for faith'.

As such, can you truly claim that wars committed to in the name of religion actually follow the tenets of the religion they claim to represent? At the end of the day, if a Christian and a Muslim declare war on each other, aren't they aba

Absolutely. What I don't understand is why all the crackpots that believe in the invisible space-jew would actually care about aliens. Hell, the bible has been proved wrong so many fucking times we've lost count. Dinosaurs, for instance. They would just say "The devil created those aliens" or "god put those aliens there to test your faith", or some other bullshit, just like they do now with all the rest of the stuff they were wrong about.

Well, There is no god, and just about everything that surrounds us is conclusive proof that there is no such thing as a god.

Regarding why anyone would deny evidence... that's what religious people do. The only way to believe in a magic flying jew that is his own father is to deny logic, science, and any kind of common sense.

This event should be immediately classified since it would create mass panic among the general population and destroy one's belief in the Church.

One can take the bolded section in one of two ways:

1. If you believe in god, why would the existence of aliens prove that god doesn't exist?

Or

2. Why would you deny evidence in front of you?

Frankly, I don't buy it that Churchill actually made the church quote. Until someone proves differently, I think someone pulled that out of their ass.

"The allegations involving Churchill were made by the grandson of one his personal bodyguards, an RAF officer who overheard the discussion, who wrote to the Ministry of Defence in 1999 inquiring about the incident after his grandfather disclosed details to his family."

So what we have is a story passed down over three generations, related third-hand that Churchill said this. Considering the British public's fear of V-weapon atacks, I can see the panic angle. But the religion angle? That sounds like it made its way into the story over the years. It doesn't sound like something Churchill would say.

Admirable as it is that you chose not to retain your culture's superstitions and follow a more logical path, I'm sure that your ignorance shines through in many other areas. I'm just trying to suggest that you be a little less critical and quick to judge. Most people follow a faith because it provides them with direction and meaning, not because they necessarily believe everything they are taught. I generally support religion for this very reason. Nihilism in our lower classes leads to much worse situations

And yet, not one has ever in human history produced this "incontrovertible physical evidence" of the existence of God.

There's a word for claiming you have some "incontrovertible physical evidence" but never producing it while at the same time asserting over and over that you've got such evidence. It's not a very nice word.

I'm confronted with people who try and force their beliefs down my throat all the time. Vegetarians, vegans, gays, straights, liberals, libertarians, conservatives, and many others are far more guilty of it than Christians.

I was going to ask what gay people were trying to force down your throat. But I can't think of a way to word it that doesn't sound dirty.

The vast majority of people find homosexuality objectionable - and the gays are demanding that we accept them as equals.

[Citation needed] on your demographics, first of all.

Second, I assume what you mean by demand is that they leave no room for refusal, that they are overbearing in their attempts to get you to acknowledge them. If they are being overbearing, or violent, then they are bad people, just as you, or any homophobe, would be wrong in being overbearing or violent to them. Moral issues must always and explicitly go both ways. If they are violent, they are a criminal; if you are, you are. Those who are not being a bad person in any way who are also homosexual (and they are out there; I'd suspect they're the majority) should not be lumped in with the criminals any more than all black people or all businessmen or all {FOREIGN NATIONAL}s should be assumed to be criminals.

Because it's not actually all that hard to identify criminals. There are some, scammers and the like, that are probably hard to track down, but when you come across someone who likes hurting people, you're going to have an inkling. If the cops in your area are understaffed, corrupt, or stupid, or the jails become nothing more than catch-and-release, then identifying criminals doesn't help, but it's not that hard to tell someone who actually is a decent human being from someone who isn't.

And because it's not all that hard to tell who the actual bad people are, let me say clearly and distinctly that we don't need people making up rules where if you break those rules "you are a bad person." There are bad people out there. You don't have to pretend. Go out there and go looking; you will find them. It's not hard to tell the difference. If you think gays are bad, go spend a week living with rapists or arsonists or something like that. Those sort of people are not a myth. You do not need to imply that "maybe that gay person is one of those mythical rapists I hear so much about" just because you don't see that side of life. Go find people that have actually been in those terrible situations, and understand through them that there are plenty of bad guys without making more by means of moral statute.

I'm confronted with people who try and force their beliefs down my throat all the time.

Or, more likely, when confronted by a Christian "forcing their beliefs down your throat," you just don't notice, because it doesn't bother you as much as one of those damn gays trying to force you to not persecute or discriminate against them.

I'm confronted with people who try and force their beliefs down my throat all the time.

Or, more likely, when confronted by a Christian "forcing their beliefs down your throat," you just don't notice, because it doesn't bother you as much as one of those damn gays trying to force you to not persecute or discriminate against them.

--Jeremy

God loves everybody. Gays and straight people alike. Homosexuality is a sin (because relationships based on sexual preference are, naturally, sinful), but God still loves them. The Bible, last I checked, says we shouldn't be mean to people; why would homosexuals be an exception? The "Christians" you're talking about aren't Christians at all, and it's extremely unfair and short-sighted to assume that all Christians (not to forget Atheists) support such extremist (and un-Godly) views.

Since you are obviously either Christian or an explicit sympathizer, why should we expect Christians to harass you? They are too busy harassing people who don't bow to their religion. I have yet to experience a Vegan knocking on my door asking me to join. In fact, here in the heart of vegan country, I have never been harassed by a vegan. I'm pretty sure you're just making up harassment stories to support your point. You aren't Bill O'Reilly are you?

I wonder what the Christian nutcases would say if, for example, Hindus started demanding that the federal government protected their particular superstition. I would love to see the proposition in California that banned the eating of beef.

I'm confronted with people who try and force their beliefs down my throat all the time. Vegetarians, vegans, gays, straights, liberals, libertarians, conservatives, and many others are far more guilty of it than Christians.

Really? How so? I can't see how this can be possible. Gays, for example, just want to live normal lives like you and me. Christians wants to force their superstition on gay people by forcing them to live along those superstitious lines. Thankfully people a lot smarter than you have understood that you are not allowed to force your religious views on anybody, and have now told the nutcases in California that everybody is equal, and that consenting adults can marry anybody they wish.

Remember, when gays demand equal rights, they are not forcing anything at all on you. They are only trying to stop you forcing your superstition on them.

Please note, when I call your religious views superstition it is not to be mean. They are superstition. All religious views are. By definition.

Gays do have all the same rights as regular people. They can marry someone of the opposite sex just like everyone else

Rubbish. The government prevents gays from marrying the people they love, while you and I are free to marry.

Oh and please show me the marriage law that says you have to love someone or be sexually attracted to them in order to get married

Why do you think I think there is such a law?

So out side of history paralleling religious beliefs in how society was set up, there is really nothing about marriage being between a man and a woman that is discriminatory

The fact that you don't see that when you say "marriage being between a man and a woman" that is discriminatory by definition.

This is why this activist judge

Yeah, all judges who limit the powers of the government are activist judges. And you are a fucking communist for demanding the government decide who I can and can not marry as a consenting adult. I hate communists like you who want

I have never seen any creditable studymade up shit on pro gay sitesbut the truth is

A plethora of credible studies are available literally at the touch of a button, many of them suggesting a biological component to homosexuality. I suppose your findings are dependent on your definition of credible, and since you declare that you know "the truth", you may not be open to contradictory evidence.

Here are a few I found just now, but I'm sure you can let your fingers do their own walking if you are interested.

No, they have gay parades all over the nation for the same reason that African Americans had to march on Washington. Do you really think it is OK for states to stop Negroes from sitting on the same bench as you and I?

They act abnormally so that thy can be normal

Any oppressed part of the population will try to get out from under that oppression. That is normal. What is not normal is to let petty insecurities about your own sexuality demand that all people who are what you fear you are have less rights that "normal" people.

So - where's this evidence? Do vegans live ten years longer, on average? Twenty years? Maybe they live twice as long as meat eaters? If there are any credible citations, I might consider converting.

I do know from study and from experience that hard working men, especially in cold climates, need the condensed energy found in meats and meat products. A guy can eat two tons of vegetables, and not have the energy and stamina needed to get through a day's work. Add four to eight ounces of meat to his two tons of vegetables, and he's a new man! In fact, he won't need those two tons of veggies at all - he'll opt for a couple of sensible servings, along with a slice of bread and a piece of pie.

Of course, I don't expect an audience of nerds and geeks to appreciate that. I know that SOME of the nerds and geeks have worked hard sometime during their lives, but many of you have spent your lives in offices, classrooms, and other sheltered areas, seldom lifting anything heavier than a can of Mountain Dew.

Note to all readers who are looking for comments about UFOs on this story:

Scroll down. And I mean WAAAY down, because half of the fucking comments are arguments about religion that have NOTHING to do with this story, regardless of a Churchill one-liner. Seriously, 50% of the comments below are stupid side-bars about religion.

What you said: Nihilism in our lower classes leads to much worse situations than a little faith.

What that means: Nihilism in our lower classes leads to much worse situations than a few "harmless" lies told to the little incompetent bastards for their own good, and which coincidentally keepd them from rioting or rebelling against us, the ruling oligarchy.

Not that it matters much, but I am a highly-spiritual atheist...or at least, "atheist" is what most people label me as. My definition of god isn't the same as that of most religions' definition, hence the label.

god to me isn't a discernable being, but rather an abstract idea. I don't refer to all objects as god (like most religious philosophy), but rather only the connection between them. My primary argument that I use against the common religious definition of god comes from, strangely enough, an extremely scientifically inaccurate movie:

"god must be greater than the greatest of human weaknesses and, indeed, the greatest of human skill. god must even transcend our most remarkable-to emulate nature in its absolute splendor. How can any man or woman sin against such greatness of mind? How can one little carbon unit on Earth-in the backwaters of the Milky Way, the boondocks-betray god, ALMIGHTY? That is impossible. The height of arrogance is the height of control of those who create god in their own image."

I don't want to flame you, but I really dislike the term "spiritual". It just springs to mind chubby girls pretending to be witches behind their parent's house. I've always like the term agnostic. I believe in a higher power, but to say that one particular group can completely understand it, and that nobody else can is the height of hubris, hence my problem with religion.

Non-religious and strict Atheists tend to have a strong aversion to anything that exists on "faith" and denies reason in strict scientific terms. These are the kinds of people that absolutely won't believe in the medicinal properties of herbs (really, how do you think medicine got invented? We noticed X + Y vegetable cures chronic pain, and 2000 years later some scientist isolated chemicals that he packaged into a pill as a pain killer...), won't believe that meditation helps reduce stress (non-scientific bullshit, you could just sleep...), etc; anything that doesn't sound like it came out of a lab coat is obvious bullshit.

I identify myself as what you call a "Non-religious strict athiest" and I don't agree with your statement here.

I do believe that herbs can provide limited healing powers, in the same way that other over-the-counter and prescription drugs can. As you said, herbs are where almost all drugs have their origins from. I, for one, find a hot cup of decaf tea to be very relaxing. What I don't believe in is snake-oil, miracle cures, and their like...

It has also been proven that meditation can help with stress. The act of meditation causes your brain to release endorphins that cause your body to change. Meditation can also be healing in that the reduced stress levels help to boost your immune system.

As an athiest, I do believe in spiritualism. Spiritualism in the sense that you can train your mind to have positive effects on your body, and train your mind to help achieve clarity of perception and understanding of your life, body and it's surroundings.

As an athiest, I do NOT believe in a god(s), an afterlife, ghosts, or anything super natural. This includes: Faith healers, heaven/hell, vampires/werewolves, prayer, divine intervention, creationism, etc.

These are the kinds of people that absolutely won't believe in the medicinal properties of herbs (really, how do you think medicine got invented? We noticed X + Y vegetable cures chronic pain, and 2000 years later some scientist isolated chemicals that he packaged into a pill as a pain killer...), won't believe that meditation helps reduce stress (non-scientific bullshit, you could just sleep...), etc; anything that doesn't sound like it came out of a lab coat is obvious bullshit.

A gross misrepresentation and over-generalisation. I personally do not 'refuse to believe in the medicinal properties of herbs'. What I refuse to accept is that chewing on a leaf is somehow more effective than the refined medicine created from that leaf. I have no doubts that the brain'sstate can be affected by meditation, reading a book, playing a videogame, spending time on the firing range, or having a nap.

Thus these people are ignorant to the portion of the world that has not yet been explained. These people would have been ignorant to the concept that the earth rotates around the sun 500 years ago-- I mean shit, look at the sky, the sun starts at one point in the sky and winds up on the exact opposite side. Obviously it goes around the Earth! And all contemporary reasoning has not explained how in the fuck the earth could be going around the sun, or spinning, so such claims are bullshit.

I suspect that you may be trolling here. If not, you are demonstrating a remarkable level of ignorance about the basic tenets of scientific thinking.

Sigh. This comes up every now and then and it is, as what most religious nuts say, pure and utter rubbish. Atheism is religion in exactly the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby. An atheist doesn't deny the existence of God, he simply refuses to generate a belief system around random ideas. The number of things that are unlikely to exist is exactly infinite. An atheist fails to believe in all of them, God has no special place in that lack of belief. I do not believe in blue midgets that go invisible if you try to look at them. I assume you do not believe in them either. Is that lack of belief of yours a religion?

Now, to what is often named "strong" atheism, the active denial of the existence of a particular God with a particular set of properties. Once someone gives me a testable hypothesis of "God" and I have falsified it, I will of course know that this particular form of "God" doesn't exist. I do, for example, know that "The God who created the world 6000 years or so ago" does not exist simply because the property "who created the world 6000 years or so ago" has been falsified, the earth is significantly older and the proof is incontrovertible. That particular God I know for sure does not exist. U can't say that about the little blue men in the forest who go invisible when you look at them. I can not say that they do not exist, I just fail to believe in them. As I fail to collect stamps.

These are the kinds of people that absolutely won't believe in the medicinal properties of herbs

Please stop making stuff up. Lying just isn't a good way to conduct a debate. There is not a single atheist in the world who won't believe in something that has well documented effects. Honestly, you are just being childish.

Thus these people are ignorant to the portion of the world that has not yet been explained.

Pure and utter rubbish. You really do not know anything at all about science. Anything where there is a viable hypothesis is debated within science, and if you can postulate a theory on it you are golden. The problem is that some people insist on believing stuff that has been proven wrong. Lots of herbs have very good medicinal value, and science makes use of this by detecting what in the specific herb has the actual effect, and then scientists will try to isolate said substance and improve upon it.

Example - a scientist finds a plant that in some cases prevents the body from rejecting implants (found while walking in the mountains of Norway). He doesn't discover this fact until he gets back to the lab of course, but decades later, hundreds of thousands of implants have succeeded where they would otherwise fail. The plant as such had a moderate effect, when the drug was refined from the plant it had a significantly higher success rate. The scientist would have been an idiot to ignore the real result, and he would have been an even bigger idiot if he had not refined the active ingredient and made it into a pill.

Because these people have no tolerance for anything that isn't physical, proven, and accepted by hard reasoning, they have no spirituality.

Ignorant rubbish. Thanks to the people you apparently despise so you are alive and you will grow old. If it wasn't for them you would be dying in your cave waiting for someone to come back with some fire harvested from a lightening strike.

It's not that he didn't want her to hear the word. He didn't want her pledging to a god neither he nor she believed in.
Apparently the religious are extremely ignorant in legal matters (see it sounds stupid the other way around too.)

Disturbed spirituality is common in Atheists (for example, the guy that sued the school board because the Pledge of Allegiance contains the word "God" and he doesn't want his daughter to hear THAT WORD).

Yikes, so many ad-hominems, and so many attempts at mind-reading. I don't normally dignify such comments with replies, but I'll pinch my nose and make an exception this time.

I'm not an athiest, and I don't want appeals to "God" or any other "higher power" in our Pledge of Allegiance; the fact that "under God" wasn't even a part of the pledge until 1954 underscores my belief that it doesn't belong there. I don't think "God" belongs on our currency, either, or any other piece of government officialdom. Attempts to retcon the religious belifefs, or lack thereof, of the Founding Fathers aside, I don't think religion or "spirituality" belong in the public sphere.

Yet I'm still more than just a complicated chemical reaction, billions of years in the making. Our "self awareness" is not something that can be explained away with current science. Yes, as an outside observer looking in at everyone else, it makes perfect sense; humans (and all animals) are just complicated machines, a bunch of inputs and outputs controlled by a lump of grey matter. But, there is still something there that disconnects you from everyone else; trapped in your head for your ~80 years. I'm not saying this is a soul, but calling people childish, who are merely trying to name something we clearly don't understand, is silly.

Well, we all suffer from a lack of "spirituality" because there is no such thing as a spirit.

We are animals. We do not have souls or spirits. What you call "spirituality", I call childish superstition.

You can not prove this assertion. Your belief about such things is just that; belief. Others believe differently. Granted, the fundies can be absolutely maddening in their insistence that they "know" that their favorite book of "the word of God" is complete and unerring, but when it comes right down to it, none of us really knows.
There's a quote, but for the life of me I can't recall the origin... "Every thinking person must be an agnostic."

Well, we all suffer from a lack of "spirituality" because there is no such thing as a spirit.

We are animals. We do not have souls or spirits. What you call "spirituality", I call childish superstition.

You can not prove this assertion. Your belief about such things is just that; belief.

Ah, but you got it all wrong. Let me try to explain. You are right that he can not prove that there is no spirit or soul. That is impossible. You can in fact not prove a negative. I can not prove that there are not invisible pink unicorns in the forest. I can not prove that there is not little blue men living in my carpet and every time I try to look at one he hides behind something. I can not even (practically) prove that there is not a tiny china tea pot circling our solar system in the Oort Cloud.

You might question the specifics (For example, what species in particular do we come from, what methods are involved in evolution, or even if natural selection works at all the way it's been described). But there are NO DOUBTS about a very simple fact: Animals fuck, and their offspring is a combination of their DNA. After a long time, species change, new species are created, other disappear. That process eventually created us. That is the simple truth. And we can prove it any way. Just watch two dogs fuck, wait nine months, and tell me what you get. There you go, proof of evolution. Does your son look similar to you? bam! evolution. Kiwi is proof of evolution.

You might question the specifics, and they might even be wrong, but that doesn't deny the principle behind evolution. "You don't have enough fossils, therefore god created adam and eve" is just plain stupid.

Evolution would be more indicated if your son had traits that were present in neither of his parents.

He does. And no, mutation is not the only way to dramatically alter genetic material. Your understanding of the process of evolution is about 150 years old and needs updating.

The really short: The difficult point is speciation. Can evolution through regular mating lead to speciation? What is speciation? Assuming you start with one mating pair and you track all their offspring as if they were the root in a tree with a lot of branches, speciation is what you get if some time in that evolutionary tree, one of

Darwin's theory of evolution is a conclusion based on a collection of empirical observations. Darwin never theorized why or how it occurred. He never theorized about it beyond "evolution happens, here's what I've observed that makes me think so". Knowledge of DNA and mutations were still quite a way off in the future.

So in reality there's a lot of truth to it. He didn't make up his observations. They can still be observed today. Selective breeding artificially creates evolution every day. Has been for thousands of years since man domesticated the dog. Evolution can be demonstrated. If you own a dog you own a product of experimental evolution since without man that dog would still be a wolf.

As to why evolution occurs, it is because the laws of nature are such that it must occur. Any deeper theological or philosophical reason is beyond the scope of science. I think a lot of people misinterpret evolution, I know I did until only a few years ago. For example the phrase "survival of the fittest" can be misinterpreted as though species "want" to survive or survival is a "good" thing. The correct intepretation, however, is that species/individuals with attributes that happen to be suited to survival

Here is a spoiler alert for all in cyber world and those that believe in tooth fairy like tales. I had complete electrical system heart failure a month & 1/2 ago. I died but kept alive through CPR and later revived. There is no light to "go to" as promoted through hollywood and hearsay. When the switch goes off, so do the lights. The dead know nothing. I know this for a fact, I went there..

It has to do with very specific stimulation of the brain. Some people experience it. Most do not. It can be readily created in the lab. Basically your testimony, in this regard, has no basis for commentary on anything as its scientifically proven the, "into the light", phenomenon exists. This is not to say you should believe one way or the other, but your experience proves nothing, one way or the other.

Newly released secret files show that the grandson of one of Winston Churchill's personal bodyguards once claimed that Churchill ordered a cover-up of an alleged encounter between a UFO and a RAF bomber"

The real question is why does shit like this get posted here? I see "OMG READ UFOES!!" stories on slashdot and io9 more often than I like. Actually, I'd like it to be never. Unfortunately, conspiracy theories and wishful thinking get ad impression from morons. Considering there's no shortage of paranormal shows on television and that the "History" channel is little more than the conspiracy theory channel, we might be entering a new age of ignorance and superstition. So much for the who

No credit is needed. Just the knowledge of doing his favorite species a favour. Even though we do look exactly like Gallifreians. That, a sonic screwdriver, a stolen TARDIS Type 40, and some of the hottest assistants ever, who needs thanks? A oddly long scarf and a card would be nice though.

The world is too caught up that the Earth is the one place for any type of life in the universe, we're not prepared to deal with other possibilities.
I think that even the course that NASA is demonstrating now - proving that it's possible that there was water on Mars, opening up the possibility of a discovery of some type of life perhaps long extinct - is preparing the general public to slowly get ready to the idea that there's the existiance of extraterrestrial life.
Tin foil hat time - Perhaps NASA already knows that this life exists, but they need to get the public ready for acceptance of it by slowly introducing more and more evidence so that society doesn't lose its marbles.

The world is too caught up that the Earth is the one place for any type of life in the universe, we're not prepared to deal with other possibilities. I think that even the course that NASA is demonstrating now - proving that it's possible that there was water on Mars, opening up the possibility of a discovery of some type of life perhaps long extinct - is preparing the general public to slowly get ready to the idea that there's the existiance of extraterrestrial life. Tin foil hat time - Perhaps NASA already knows that this life exists, but they need to get the public ready for acceptance of it by slowly introducing more and more evidence so that society doesn't lose its marbles.

I would argue that the boom in popularity of science fiction/fantasy movies and TV (e.g. E.T., Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5, Stargate SG-1, etc.) over the past 40 years has done more to prepare people for the possibility of extraterrestrial life than any NASA press release.

Ahhh... But we must continue to wonder if aliens are secretly behind the sci fi scenes, molding us and educating us. But for what? Perhaps preparing us for the day when they will cook us and eat us. Perhaps our intelligence is just something their bio engineers built in as a way to insure that most of the biomass of Sol 3 is concentrated into six billion bite sized nuggets when they swing by three billion years later. "Hey Vorb! These are great. Just pull off the head and suck out the juice. Bitchin', dude.

The sheer quantity of power required for interstellar flight is so tremendous that if members of a species have too much (How much is too much? I don't know, but I strongly suspect that we're well over the limit right now.) tendency to kill each other, that species will self-destruct before achieving interstellar flight.

Therefore I suggest that any interstellar travelers that find us will be peaceful.

One extra supposition is needed - that this is relatively independent of psychology. Some have proposed the rabidly xenophobic hive-mind as a way to be peaceful enough to achieve interstellar travel, yet remain warlike toward what they find out there. I would argue that before you achieve interstellar flight, you've got to get to interplanetary flight. Hive minds remain hive minds through close communication. The bigger supposition is that hive minds cannot remain intact at large (relative to C) distances - they lose the tight communication needed. You wind up with two hive minds talking to each other. What's more, you likely have two hive minds in radically different environments with attending radically different needs. At some point the xenophobia kicks in.

This leads to a few more things...

Once you have the technology for interstellar flight, you don't really need planets, or at least not habitable ones. You certainly need mass, and you certainly need metal, but those can come from comets, asteroids, and other uninhabitable places.

Chances are very good that you're no longer biological. The demands, hazards, and logistics of moving a body around our own solar system are tough enough. Interstellar flight is that much tougher. Assuming we reach Ray's Singularity, we'll simply send Turing images of ourselves. Much simpler, plus you can either turn yourself off or slow your time perception during the boring parts of the trip.

I also think that planets like ours would remain interesting to interstellar travelers. You don't get our there without curiosity, and there would be a kind of historical interest in planetary life. At the same time, when you study something you try not to interfere with it - you try to minimize our effect on the system, unless you're doing a deliberate cause-effect experiment.

Perhaps one of the greatest hazards would be some primitive species getting technology that it's not psychologically ready to have. If we were to find and reverse-engineer a functional starship, we might get out there before we've learned to behave ourselves. This bunks my whole argument - give/stolen, as opposed to self-developed interstellar travel.

Put this together, and you're likely to see interstellar travelers being very careful to avoid contact - something like the Prime Directive. The "test" of developing a warp drive as a requisite for first contact also makes sense in this light. Perhaps the Vulcans had the Right Stuff in their cargo bay to turn the Earth into a cinder had they been too disappointed in us.

Given that we've been detecting extrasolar planets for a number of years, getting better by the year, it's easy to believe that an interstellar species could detect the Earth and tell that it has life, if they have a suitably clear (not obscured by too much dust or other stars) view.

So imagine a mission out there in the asteroid belt, a loose association of Turing images from planets around other stars, watching us. They used to be closer, but as our technology has advanced, they've had to move further out. Of course listening to our communications has given still more information perhaps, than they could get before. Imagine for a moment that after hours, they wear their virtual bodies, gather in a virtual bar, and talk about us, perhaps taking bets on how long it'll take us to either destroy ourselves or overcome our juvenile impulses. Maybe they liked "Star Wars", and the virtual bar is straight out of the Mos Eisley Cantina.

There's still a big difference between interplanetary and interstellar travel. Assuming they've managed to leave their homeworld without destroying themselves, and have managed to remain somewhat warlike, they now have the opportunity to develop interplanetary warfare. For this the stakes become much higher and the weapons different. As you say, "probably not much use for other lifeforms," changes the stakes in warfare, because you don't have to live on the same hunk of planetary rock that your attacking

What possesses you to believe that a peaceful, non-economic race of beings with super-light travel actually exists? Any race of beings with interstellar space flight capability would want trade or conquest; allowing beings such as ours to evolve naturally is a waste of resources that could be accessed now, instead of in 5000 years.

Every time I read comments such as yours it literally makes me laugh and shake my head.

Its very important to keep this in your head as you continue to read... Why do conquerers conquer? Resources!

If a race exists which has interstellar travel, they literally have unlimited resources. Think about it. And so a race with interstellar travel and unlimited resources would need to trade or conquer for what reason? Oh that's right, they would have zero reason to do so.

Think about the technology required for interstellar travel. Think about the power required to do so. Think about the resources required to allow such a science.

Space is not empty. It in itself is full of resources. If you have the energy for interstellar travel, you have access to unlimited resources. Concepts such as Terraforming and whatnot become easily within reach.

Hell, if we simply had higher energy densities readily available, the e

and the germans had secret experimental jet and stealth aircraft at the time that were never produced in volume due to the allies bombing the germans' industrial capabilities. Northrop had test versions of what is now the B2 back before world war 2 but it had problems back then which is why it took so long to finally make a flying wing design.

Once radar was invented, it was noted the flying wing had a very low radar return. While this aspect was not understood, its significance was not lost on scientists and engineers. In fact, this is one of the reasons why German designers was working to create a long range, flying wing bomber,

I think the significance of German WW2 technology has been overstated by history. They experimented with some neat stuff and had the Allies bested in a few areas (rocketry) but ultimately they wasted resources that could have been put to more productive uses. The Allies managed to best them technologically in key areas -- anti-submarine warfare, small arms, nuclear technology, computing, radar, etc. Other than rocketry I'm hard pressed to think of a sector that they beat the Allies in.

That sounds a tad revisionist history. The US, very specifically, decided to go for evolutionary technological improvements. The Germans were specifically going for revolutionary improvements.

The US anti-sub improvements existed because of significant German U-boat innovations. Small arms? Germans. New style of warfare; including combined operations? Germans. Nuclear technology - Germans - stalled by their own scientists and what kicked Manhattan into overdrive. I do agree with computing and radar - especia

This could be:a. Yet another part of the ever growing, ever large conspiracy to cover up the existence of seeming observational aliensb. A maneuver by Churchill to silence a few pilots who didn't want to fly the channel anymore and made up a story to get out of getting themselves blown up. If the story had gotten out (true or not), it would've caused possible panic and more importantly a good reasons for pilots to refuse to fly, this with the backdrop of the a truly catastrophic war.

Read the article and find that the story is told by the grandson of a guard who overheard a conversation. Wow, that is just brilliant.

The allegations involving Churchill were made by the grandson of one his personal bodyguards, an RAF officer who overheard the discussion

Apart from telling his daughter – the scientist’s mother – about the incident when she was nine, the bodyguard, who was “greatly affected by his experience”, only disclosed the details to his wife on his deathbed in 1973.

The scientist, also an expert in astronomy who said he developed software for use in "spacecraft thermal engineering", was told years later by his mother.

So after reading TFA, all we have is the word of what one person's mother was allegedly told by Winston Churchill's bodyguard about what Sir Winston apparently did to an alleged report by two crewmembers.

Unfortunately there's a lack of any kind of "evidence" that said incident even took place, since any possible files with reference to the alleged event were destroyed 60 years ago. So, what was the news here again?

Summary said:
"t should say:
Newly released secret files show that the grandson of Winston Churchill once claimed that Churchill ordered a cover-up of an alleged encounter between a UFO and a RAF bomber"
Kinda different."
And Summary is incorrect: the person making the claim is the grandson of one of Mr. Churchill's bodyguards. He, the grandson, is a respected physicist and an expert in Astronomy. Please re-read the link in the/. article.

WWII produced quite a lot of UFO stories, and the event in the article sound pretty much like a foo fighter [wikipedia.org], which are a pretty well-documented, if unexplained, phenomenon. In other words, there are dozens of similar stories which nobody has made any effort to cover up.

Regardless of whether or not this story is BS, which I'm rather certain it is, I fail to see why it would be catastrophic to the human race to learn that extraterrestrials do exist, assuming they're not bent on our destruction. It would undoubtedly have profound implications on humanity, but I have a hard time believing that it would provoke mass panic.

Additionally, why would such an event instill doubts in religion? Any logical religious person would simply see this as a sign that god is even more awesome

1) Atmospheric reflection(hmm five lights moving really fast can't be a five fighter formation?)2) Many bombers encountered ball lightning in WWII but because of lack of science education classified them as UFOs3) Astronauts aren't seeing aliens.4) X Planes: Flying wings were classified as aliens but have been in development since WWII. Area 51 was just a base for testing classified military aircraft.5) Alien abductions are a) mass hysteria and b) usually involve some sort of dream or psychotic episode.6) Roswell was established as a military x-plane crash at a later date. (The aliens being test pilots in jump suits some drunken hick though were aliens.)

1) The story was about Aliens attacking2) We where in a real threat of being bombed by the Germans.3) The 'panic' was from people who tuned in mid show and only heard the part about bombing and burnings. They assumed the Germans had attacked.

In short, if aliens landed and did attack, people would flee for there lives.Whether those were Aliens from Germans or outer space. wouldn't matted in that case.